Chapter Eleven #2
Feeling suddenly light-hearted, she made herself a sandwich and sat down at the table munching it as she looked around.
Her little pine tree was wilting and had deposited most of its needles onto the rug, and two of the baubles had fallen to the floor.
Christmas really was over and she was going to have to think about taking all these decorations down before Twelfth Night.
She was just about to leave for work next morning, when she heard her phone vibrate and she slid it out of her handbag to look at it.
It was a number she didn’t recognise. An international number—Spanish, she thought. And when she clicked on the call she discovered it was Cristina, the woman she’d met at Javier’s party. The woman with the potential to be a new friend. The blonde in the green dress.
‘Hi,’ said Hollie, a smile entering her voice. ‘How lovely to hear from you! How are you?’
‘I’m...well. You have returned to England, I think?’
‘That’s right. I’m just about to go to work. I’m flying back at the beginning of February.’
Cristina’s accented voice dipped by a fraction. ‘And Maximo. Is he there with you?’
‘No, I’m afraid he’s not. He’s coming over at the weekend.’
‘I see.’ There was a pause. ‘I understand you’re pregnant, Hollie? I really should have congratulated you at the party.’
‘Yes, I am.’ Hollie felt her heart give a little kick. ‘I’m twelve weeks along. The scan is on Wednesday.’
There was another pause but this time, Cristina’s voice sounded different. It quivered with the air of somebody who knew something. More specifically, who knew something you didn’t.
‘I like you, Hollie,’ she said slowly. ‘And I have learned something which is difficult for me to tell you, but which I feel you ought to know.’
‘You’re scaring me now,’ said Hollie, only half joking. ‘What is it?’
‘It’s about Maximo.’ There was a pause. ‘About the real reason he’s marrying you.’
It was an extraordinary thing for someone to say out of the blue like that—especially someone who didn’t know you—and for a moment Hollie’s only response was silence.
Her fingers tightened around the handset and she could feel her throat constrict.
She felt faintly disappointed. As if she had misjudged Cristina, who perhaps didn’t want to be her friend at all.
If she were a different kind of person she might have frostily retorted that it wasn’t any of the other woman’s business.
But she wasn’t going to hide from the truth, and if Cristina was expressing what everyone else was thinking, then maybe the subject would be better addressed head-on.
‘I’m not na?ve enough to believe the wedding would be happening if I weren’t pregnant,’ she said quietly.
‘I’m sure you’re not. But he’s not just marrying you in order to maintain respectability,’ Cristina said, and then the words came out in a rush, as if she was embarrassed to repeat them.
‘He’s marrying you because he stands to inherit the family business, which will be put in trust for your child.
Only the will stipulates that the child must be born within wedlock. ’
Hollie froze.
But Maximo had been estranged from his father since the age of fourteen. He’d told her that.
With her free hand, she gripped the back of a nearby chair. ‘I don’t believe you,’ she whispered.
‘I’m afraid it’s true, my dear,’ said Cristina.
‘I heard this through Beatriz, one of his stepsisters. It was a hotly contested clause in the will, although the lawyers assured them it was watertight. They are obviously angry that their father’s illegitimate son stands to inherit one of the most profitable companies in Spain.
I’m sorry, Hollie. I felt it best you should know, but this is not news I would ever wish to be the bearer of. ’
‘No. Thank you.’ Hollie’s voice was brisk now. Polite, even. ‘I appreciate it, Cristina.’
With a few more robotic words she cut the call, though all the time she was berating herself.
How stupid she had been. Sorrow clamped its way around her heart like a vice and then she gave a bitter laugh.
She might have lost her virginity but that didn’t mean she wasn’t still laughably na?ve, did it?
She had stupidly imagined she had no illusions about the opposite sex, but it seemed she was still capable of being blinded by the stars which had temporarily danced in front of her eyes.
She had wanted love so badly that she had been prepared to overlook what was blazingly obvious.
Because she didn’t know Maximo at all, not really.
The man she saw was the man she had wanted to see, not the one with hidden depths which he kept concealed from her.
He was marrying her to gain control of one of Spain’s most successful companies.
Of course he was. Although he certainly didn’t need the money, maybe he felt it was a justified legacy—to make up for his father’s rejection.
Payback time. But it didn’t alter one key and painful fact. ..
That he had betrayed her, just as her father had betrayed her mother.
Her knees felt weak and she gripped the back of the chair even harder, afraid they might buckle. But the weirdest thing was that after that moment of dizziness had passed, Hollie felt calm. Icy calm. Almost as if she had been expecting this. As if things had always been too good to be true.
Because they were, weren’t they?
Plenty of women got pregnant without getting married.
Did she really think that someone like Maximo Diaz would ask someone like her to be his wife if he didn’t stand to gain something from it, especially when he’d told her right from the start he didn’t want a baby?
Or had she walked into the self-deceptive trap of thinking they had something special between them, just because she’d fallen in love with him?
She had fallen in love with him.
Well, more fool her.
He stands to inherit the family business . Cristina’s words were branded on Hollie’s brain like fire.
If he’d told her himself, she might have understood.
If he’d said Look, this baby means that I can get something I’ve always lusted after , she probably could have accepted it.
If he’d kept it coldly businesslike from the beginning, then perhaps she wouldn’t have built up all those fantasies in her head.
But he hadn’t and that had given her imagination a free rein.
No wonder she thought she’d seen a look of triumph on his face when he’d asked if they could announce the pregnancy.
He was probably rubbing his hands with glee at the thought of all that new power.
She picked up her phone, turning it over and over in her hand before finally tapping her fingers over the keypad.
It took longer than it should have done but that was because her hands were trembling so much.
She kept the message short—because, really, it all boiled down to one simple fact whichever way you looked at it.
Maximo...
A tear dripped onto the back of her hand and, impatiently, she shook it away before continuing to type.
Being back in Devon has given me a bit of time to reflect on things and I just don’t think it’s going to work out between us.
Her finger hovered as she battled between the desire to put as much distance between them as possible and the knowledge that she needed to act like a grown-up.
If you like we can talk in a couple of days. Hollie.
She didn’t put any kisses, and that drove home the realisation that there had never been any of the stuff which defined most normal love affairs.
No letters or texts of undying devotion.
Just sex and a baby and a big diamond ring.
She thought about the turrets and towers of Kastelloes and the thick snow which had trapped them there.
She remembered how grateful she had been to that inclement weather, because it had brought her into Maximo’s arms. She’d been blown away by her Spanish lover, and hopeful when he’d opened up his heart to her.
The world had felt tinged with magic, when all the time. ..
All the time he had been using their marriage as a way of getting his hands on the family business.
What a trusting fool she had been.
Well, not any more.
She had once told Maximo that she could do all this on her own and she would—with or without his financial assistance. Because anything would be preferable to a lifetime of deceit.
She tugged the heavy ring from her finger and it clattered as she put it on the table and then, letting out a shuddered breath, she laid her face against her cradled arms and wept.